Wednesday, October 31, 2012

I
received an email from Kathleen Marden (which is not to say that it came just
to me, but one that she had sent to many of us interested in UFOs), niece of
Betty Hill, about a statistical study she and Denise Stoner had been working
on. “The Marden-Stoner Study on Commonalities Among UFO Abduction
Experiencers,” as it is called, was a multiple-choice survey of those who
believe they have been abducted by aliens, and a core of non-abductees as a
control group.
﻿

Kathleen Marden

According to Marden, “Nearly a year ago, Denise Stoner and I met to
discuss the commonalities that alien abduction experiencers share. As longtime
abduction investigators/researchers, we were aware of certain repeating
patterns of information and characteristics. The pertinent literature, the academic
social science studies and the works of David Jacobs, PhD, Thomas Bullard, PhD,
and the late Budd Hopkins, John Mack, MD, and others had identified several
commonalities among abduction experiencers. But we had not been able to locate
an academic study that was specific to our particular interests.”

This is something that
should have been done years ago, after it was clear that something was
happening to these people. It is not necessarily alien abduction, but there is
something going on there. When Russ Estes, Bill Cone and I conducted our
research in the mid-1990s, we had noticed some trends and wondered if there was
any significance to them. If a trend could be spotted, then we might learn
something that would help understand this aspect of UFOs or, at the very least,
the people who were reporting it.

As Kathleen noted, other
abduction researchers had also noticed some of this, but there had been no
attempt to gather statistics about it. Although a long time in coming, this is
the sort of scientific research that needs to be conducted, and it seems that Kathleen
has the background to attempt it, based on her academic and work experience.

The study, as it
stands, has had about 50 participants, and some of those are self-reported. She
wrote, “Participants for our study were solicited via the MUFON UFO Journal and several alien abduction and UFO oriented
websites. We also appeared on several radio shows and invited listeners to
participate. Last, there were questionnaires at my vendor table at several UFO
conferences and at Denise’s meetings. I posted the questionnaires, a letter of
explanation, and an informed consent notice on my website at www.kathleen-marden.com. We communicated to
participants that all questionnaires would be kept in a locked and secure location
and destroyed at the end of the study. All personal identifying information
that was volunteered would remain confidential. As a cautionary measure, we
advised all potential participants that they should only complete the
questionnaire if they could do so without feeling uncomfortable.”

After analyzing the
data, there were a couple of interesting conclusions drawn. Marden wrote:

The
vast majority was revisited—some more than 10 times—and was taken from their
homes to an alien craft. Often the abduction experiencers sensed an impending
visitation by alien entities before it occurred. The mode of communication
between alien entities and humans is almost entirely telepathic. A new psychic
awareness has emerged in the majority of experiencers and about half have found
that they now have new healing abilities.

Immediately
before or soon after a visitation they become aware of paranormal activity in
their homes, such as light orbs, objects flying through the air or from walls,
doors opening and closing without assistance, etc. The majority noticed
malfunctioning electrical equipment, appliances, watches, computers, TVs,
radios, cameras, etc.

Slightly more than half developed a new sensitivity to light and now
crave salt. They feel a foreign object in their body and are fearful of being
abducted again. Most have difficulty falling asleep and remaining asleep
throughout the night. Those who have resolved their fearfulness are more likely
to sleep restfully.

Finally, we want to express our sincere gratitude to those who
participated in this study. It wasn’t an easy task. We asked them to visit my
website and copy the 45 question or 16 question form. Then we requested that
they fill in the multiple choice questions and add their comments and accounts
of their personal experiences that would elucidate us regarding their specific
information. They were then asked to mail their questionnaires to me or to
return them via email. Although it required some effort on their part, it
reduced the possibility that hoaxers would intentionally sabotage the study. In
the end, we were very pleased with the knowledge we gained and the opportunity
it gave us to support abduction experiencers and expand the UFO research
community’s knowledge of the alien abduction phenomenon.

Those who wish to read
the entire report, who want to see the statistical breakdown and the questions
addressed, should visit her web site, address noted above. It is under the tab
labeled “Commonalities Study Final Report,” directly under the banner (at the
end of a list of places on the site). It is an interesting read.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

(Blogger’s Note: This review was written by Jerome Clark and
appeared in a slightly different form in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, 26, 3 (Fall 2012) pp. 707 – 714.
Reprinted with permission. And a thank you to Jerry Clark as well.)

One
scarcely knows where to begin.Perhaps
with this quote from a June 19, 1951, letter – reprinted in these pages (90-91)
– written by San Francisco Chronicle editor Paul G. Smith to Variety
entertainment columnist and author Frank Scully: “Frankly, I recall that when I
first saw your book I thought you were merely having fun with your
readers.”The book, the already
notorious Behind the Flying Saucers, which Henry Holt had issued the
previous September, was a marketplace success but a disaster in every quarter
that did not involve commerce.Even so
prominent an early UFO proponent as Maj. Donald Keyhoe, the first outsider to
investigate Scully's claims of a 1948 saucer recovery near Aztec, New Mexico,
rejected them as absurd and fanciful.When I read Scully's book in junior high school, my impression – even as
a naive adolescent -- was the same.

Scott Ramsey
Photo courtesy Paul Kimball

In
fact, though they circulated freely through the larger society, because of the
Scully taint rumors of UFO crashes were spurned by mainstream ufologists until
the late 1970s.Around that time, a
respected colleague, the late Leonard H. Stringfield, began collecting what he
called “crash/retrieval reports” from mostly anonymous sources with whom he
privately communicated.[1]In 1980 the first major book on the subject,
The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore, saw
print.Other books, mostly though not
exclusively focused on Roswell, followed (and an Air Force refutation followed
them in the late 1990s, succeeded by refutations of the refutation, and so on
in continuing loop to the present).

Inevitably,
Scully's tale – at least in a cleaned-up version that did not incorporate the
dead Venusians of the original – would get a second look.The first book-length treatment was William
S. Steinman and Wendelle C. Stevens's UFO Crash at Aztec (1987), a work
notable only for its levels of paranoia (high) and coherence (low).The second is the new The Aztec Incident,
based on what we are told is a $500,000 investment in research expenses and
more than two decades' worth of inquiry.

First,
so that future authorial references will be clear, the crowded by-line is
courtesy of a writing novice's error that no experienced author would have
committed.There is only one author –
Scott Ramsey – who refers to himself in the first person throughout.The other three, who participated in one way
or another in accumulating the material that made the book possible, ought to
have been cited in the credits, and not represented as co-authors.Thus, in what follows, I refer to the real
author in the singular.

Since
there is much to pan and little to praise in the comments that follow, let's
start on the most positive note circumstances render available.Aztec Incident reprints some of the
private correspondence, never before seen as far as I know, of the principal
figures in the episode.As one who has
written at length on the history of the UFO controversy in all its dimensions,
including its less lucid moments, I like that.The off-stage voices, I have found, are illuminating.

Here,
however, the revelations are modest. One never imagines for a moment that
Scully appreciated the efforts of investigative reporter J. P. Cahn (who
memorably uncovered the confidence swindle behind Behind in a couple of
hard-hitting, entertainingly documented True articles[2]), but it is
interesting to read this record of his personal complaints about Cahn's
hard-charging approach.And who can
blame Scully?Though as late as 1984
Cahn observed that he had always liked Scully personally, clearly the affection
was not destined to be reciprocal.At
the end of the job, Cahn had exposed Scully as -- in the most charitable
interpretation -- a fool.

Unfortunately,
one thing Incident does not address – cannot address by its very
purpose, which is to turn dross into gold – is to what degree Scully was a
party to the hoax.To his death in 1964,
Scully professed his confidence in what his informants, whose probity he
endorsed in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, had told him about the
crash in New Mexico along with others, less detailed, in Arizona, Maine, and
elsewhere in the late 1940s.[3] My
supposition, for which I make no larger truth claim than I can glean from
observation of his behavior over the years, is that Scully was initially gulled
into acceptance of the yarns, then grew eventually to perceive that he'd been
bamboozled.By that time, he was
sufficiently invested in the bamboozlement that he felt he could not disown his
silly book and the attendant controversy; if it took whopper-forging to sustain
his otherwise untenable position, then smalltime grifter Leo A. GeBauer – top
magnetic authority “Dr. Gee” in BFS – would become, years later, a
composite figure representing not GeBauer but some of the leading magnetic
scientists in America.(In reality, a
waitress had given GeBauer the nickname “Dr. Gee,” according to GeBauer's
widow, and Scully merely borrowed it for the book.)In other words, Scully was complicit in the
hoax.The only remaining question is if
that complicity happened sooner or later.

Obligingly,
Ramsey devotes an eye-glazing chapter (4: Dr. Gee and the Mystery Men)to profiles of eight leading
magnetism-studying scientists of mid-century America.“Without a doubt,” he insists (p. 51), “they
possibly knew or worked with Silas Newton, a man of science himself.”Only a book as rhetorically hapless as Incident
could cram “without a doubt” and “possibly” into the same pronouncement without
betraying the faintest cognitive dissonance, and then proceed to characterize
lifelong swindler Newton not only as a “man of science” but as a major one at that,
sharing his purported colleagues' access to the U.S. Government's classified
extraterrestrial bodies and technology. Having declared as much, Ramsey feels
no obligation to provide a fragment of actual evidence that links these eminent
scientists to Newton.For that matter,
he fails even to document his repeated assertion that Newton was an imposing
figure in the oil industry.

It
is Newton who was the intellectual author, if that's the phrase, of the Aztec
legend.His stories would almost
certainly have been forgotten months after their concoction if not for
Scully.In the consensus-reality
version, here highly condensed and necessarily incomplete, is how BFS
came to be:

The
print record – no prior press references to the described event, said to have
taken place on March 25, 1948, have ever been located and are almost certainly
nonexistent – begins with Scully's Variety column of October 12, 1949,
where he reports having learned from unnamed “scientists” of two saucer
retrievals, one in the Mohave Desert, the other in the Sahara.The latter vanishes from the story hereafter,
but in Scully's account the scientists examined the American ship (intact but
for a small hole in a port window), presumed to be from Venus and housing 16
humanlike midgets – all dead and “charred black” – clad in 1890s-style
clothing.The ship, it turned out, flew
along “magnetic waves.”All of its
dimensions are equally divisible by nine.

BFS,
published 10 months later, mentions two Arizona crashes but provides few
details beyond the allegation that the bodies were identical to those found at
Aztec and that the alien mathematics appeared nine-based.

Hart Canyon Crash Site
Photo Courtesy Paul Kimball

It
developed that Newton and GeBauer had imparted these tales on to Scully in
August 1949.GeBauer had shown Scully
parts from the saucer, among them a tubeless “magnetic radio.”It is generally assumed that the location for
the story has its origins in a trip GeBauer took early that same month to Hart
Canyon near Aztec – a small town in the northwestern Four Corners part of the state
– to demonstrate his alleged oil-detection device (the sort of thing known
derisively in the industry as a “doodlebug”) to locals.Hart Canyon would evolve into the location
where the ship came down and was recovered.

As
Cahn and – much later and in considerably more detail – ufologist William L.
Moore[4] would
determine, Newton and GeBauer had devoted their lives (the smart and polished
Newton more lucratively than the relatively slow-witted GeBauer) to various
confidence scams, many involving oil-finding schemes.Characterized wryly by Moore as “the type of
character best avoided by anyone with money in his pocket,” Newton got into
trouble in the 1930s in New York, Kansas, and California for assorted shady dealings.“Newton's tactic in every case was to suck in
additional investors,” Moore wrote, “and pay off the complainingparty with the money raised – in exchange, of
course, for the dropping of charges against him.”When he died in Los Angeles in 1972, Newton
had 40 legal claims filed against him based primarily in fraudulent oil and
mining schemes.Two years earlier, he
had been indicted for grand theft.

The
saucer story was intended to draw the interest of the well-heeled, who would
soon learn that GeBauer's doodlebug (the “magnetic radio”), in reality made up
of ordinary mechanical parts (as Cahn determined), was a product of
extraterrestrial technology.In other
words, if not for Scully's broadcasting the story to a national and
international audience, it would have been no more than another of
Newton/GeBauer's ephemeral efforts to separate fools from their hard-earned.

In
attempting to rehabilitate the Aztec “case,” Ramsey falls into the fatal
tactical error of defending the indefensible, namely Scully, Newton, and
GeBauer, rather than conceding their manifest flaws and drawing up an Aztec
episode that is not so fundamentally dependent upon their being who they
clearly weren't..From one way of
viewing it, Ramsey's approach is ill considered.From another, his book wouldn't exist without
BFS and all it brought into the world.There's little else outside Scully's pages, and even there, there isn't
much. One thinks of Woody Guthrie's famous words: “That stew was so thin even a
politician could have seen through it.”

Ramsey's
defense is unlikely to sway any but guile-free readers.To any critics Ramsey responds with the
self-serving, unverified words of Scully, Newton, and GeBauer, presented as the
equivalent of divine revelation standing unshaken against the darkly driven
contrary assertions of Cahn, portrayed relentlessly as pursuing a “petty
vendetta” motivated by pure “envy,” or else – and what else? – doing the dirty
work of some sinister official agency.To any sensibleobserver, Cahn
emerges as an old-fashioned, aggressive shoe-leather reporter of a type sorely
missed in this era of celebrity journalism.If Moore is mentioned, it is so briefly that I missed it in the
extensive notes I took during multiple readings of Incident.The back pages that should have been devoted
to an index are taken up with irrelevant photographs of historic Aztec.

Affirmation
of unswerving faith in Scully's severely flawed sources is not quite all of
Ramsey's book, however.After half a
million dollars and more than two decades, he has his own evidence to put
forward.That evidence, he boasts,
makes the Aztec recovery “true beyond argument.”Or maybe not.

Aztec, New Mexico
Photo Courtesy Paul Kimball

First,
however, it must be stressed that for as long as they have been interviewed on
the subject, Aztec residents have with virtually one voice denied that anything
like a UFO retrieval happened there on March 25, 1948, or any other date.That includes the man who was newspaper
editor during the period, the 1948 county sheriff, the son who succeeded him in
that office (all of whom actively sought out local informants without success),
the family that owned the property, and other longtime residents.[5]They first heard of an extraordinary UFO
incident through the publicity surrounding Scully's claims or its revival in
subsequent decades. This contrasts
tellingly with residents of another New Mexico town, Roswell, to whom an
incident many tied to the crash of an unknown object – however conflictingly
interpreted -- was widely known.No one
has to prove that something happened in the Roswell area in July 1947.

The
book opens with Ramsey's two claimants to first-person experience at the
site.Both contradict the original –
Scully – account in notable ways.Newton's drawing of the craft, shown to a University of Denver class to
whom he lectured sensationally on March 8, 1950, depicts, in researcher Joel
Carpenter's words, “a bizarre contraption that … resembled a can on top of a
[spinning] saucer.”[6]The alleged witnesses, on the other hand,
speak of a disc with a dome on top and a corresponding one on the bottom. In
Scully's account as related by Dr. Gee, it took a team of scientists two
days to break into the craft, where as in Ramsey's version it took a few
hours for locals to gain entry well before the arrival of official
personnel.(In both stories a pole poked
through a small porthole opening manages to push a door handle, exposing the
craft's interior.)

There
are two, and only two, named persons who tell the story from what is supposed
to be first-hand experienceOne, Doug
Noland, was interviewed by Ramsey after a “series of strokes.”The other, Ken Farley, since deceased, was
“dying of a respiratory disease.”Ramsey
has their alleged experiences occurring on the Scully-approved date of March
25, 1948, without ever explaining how they remembered it with such precision
decades after the alleged fact.One can
only suspect an editorial insertion into the narrative, hardly the first one.

Even
as these narratives would have us believe that dozens of civilians congregated
at the site, independent testimony to that effect is hard to come by.Ramsey's rhetoric is slippery enough to
mislead a careless reader, one who notices other names appearing in the
testimony and is lulled into thinking they amount to verification.A police officer said to be present has
“since been identified as Manuel Sandoval” – even in the absence of any
testimony from Sandoval (presumably dead or otherwise unavailable; clearly, he
was never interviewed) pertaining to the event.Noland's friend Bill Ferguson “died long before we got involved in our
research” (p. 5).Later (p. 201) Ramsey
casually remarks that Ferguson “revealed his Aztec knowledge to very few
people” while offering no reason, in the first instance but for Noland's
testimony, that Ferguson possessed such “knowledge” and, in the second, that
Ferguson told anybody at all.

Two
other informants claim to have participated in aspects of the recovery
operation.One is identified only as
“George,” for whom Ramsey vouches, which – all else considered – does notreassure.In any event, his story of a large operation run out of Roswell's Walker
Air Force Base lacks any supporting evidence.Such supporting evidence, Ramsey notwithstanding, certainly does not
come from Fred Reed.

He
writes that in April 1948 – take notice of the date – Reed's military “team was
dispatched for a 'crash clean-up' as Fred would describe it to me years later
[in 1999].”The clean-up, at the Hart
Canyon site, was to be of anything tied to the craft (which he later learned
was a UFO) and to a subsequent military presence at the site.But this was not the story – as Ramsey does
not inform his readers – that Reed provided in a strikingly different account
just a few days before he faced questions, perhaps seriously leading ones, from
the “investigator.”Here are Reed's
words as expressed in a March 27, 1999, letter to the Aztec newspaper:

Today, my wife
and I … went out to the site of UFO crash in late 1948 [note: not March 25] in
Hart Canyon..... The aliens had built stone
cairns marking the path from the oil field road to the crash site.These
cairns are still in place
today.The trees around the crash site
open to the south, which is a typical distress
signal for extraterrestrials.

The area looked
basically as it had in 1948 when the OSS [Office of Strategic Services, which
disbanded in 1945] sent our group
there.... We had heard rumors that a UFO had crashed there.But it did not look like a crash site.And we had heard that army personnel had
rushed in there and cleaned up the site.But it did not look like a
clean-up site either....

So what it
boiled down to was this: No UFO crash.Instead, the UFO landed there for some specific intent to place (bury?) some instrument or thing
there.Then they got into their saucer
and flew away.

While failing to mention that his
“witness” (whose eccentric beliefs about aliens and their ways also go
missing)had flagrantly contradicted the
testimony he solicited from him, Ramsey effects his own (unacknowledged) clean-up.Knowing, one infers, the OSS reference to be
unsupportable, he revises Reed's resume so that “he had worked for the OSS …
back in the early 1940s, [and] was now working for the military.”In Incident everything that fails to
serve the narrative either undergoes revision or gets dropped into the memory
hole.

Among other reported witnesses is a
pastor who allegedly confided to a church officer and his son that he had
witnessed dead aliens and a saucer at Hart Canyon on (Ramsey would have it,
again without justification) on March 25, 1948.Ramsey located the minister son's, also a pastor, who remarked that he
had never heard his father talk about such an experience, though he had
expressed interest in press accounts of the Roswell event at the time. An Air Force man who supposedly participated
in the Aztec cover-up in 1948 confided it to a fellow Air Force member, an
Aztec native, in England in the 1960s.The informant, Donald “Sam” Bass, cannot be found.Experienced investigator Kevin D. Randle learned
that the claim related here that Bass was killed in an accident while serving
in Vietnam cannot be verified in military records.

In Ramsey's judgment of his own
work, he has established that an Aztec recovery occurred and nobody can any
longer argue otherwise, unless I suppose on the payroll of a sinister
intelligence agency.Ramsey's credulity
is awesome and bottomless.In a passing
aside (p. 203), he outs himself as a member of that small army of far-right
cranks who discern a conspiracy toconceal
President Obama's birth certificate, apparently to protect his true identity as
a Kenya- born socialist Islamic jihadist.In fairness, Ramsey is not always impossible to take seriously.
Earlier in the book (p. 31) he acknowledges that in high school he “was never a
superior student” and that he has always been “disappointed in how history is
taught.”To those assertions, if to no
others, The Aztec Incident offers compelling testimony.

I
would like thank Kevin Randle and Joel Carpenter for their generous assistance
in the researchonwhich this review draws.

JEROME
CLARK

Canby,
Minnesota

[1]Stringfield died without ever revealing
their identities.To the extent that
subsequent investigations were possible, none seemed to lead anywhere, leaving
only speculation about the informants' motives.

[2]“The Flying Saucers and the Mysterious
Little Men” and “Flying Saucer Swindlers,” September 1952 and August 1956
issues respectively.

[3]Asecret diary/memoir allegedly composed by Scully informant Silas Newton
professes uncertainty aboutScully's
true attitude.The late ufologist Karl
T. Pflock claimed to have examined it under peculiar circumstances, though no
one else has seen or been able to verify its existence.See Pflock's“What's Really Behind the Flying Saucers?A New Twist on Aztec.”The Anomalist 8 (Spring 2000):
137-161.

[5]See Moore, p. 147-148.Also Mike McClellan, “The UFO Crash of 1948
Is a Hoax,” Official UFO, October 1975, pp. 36-37,60-64, and William E.
Jones and Rebecca D. Minshall, “Aztec, New Mexico – A Crash Story Reexamined,” International
UFO Reporter, September/October 1991, pp. 11-15,23.Ramsey says that the son of the owners of the
Hart Canyon property in 1948 refused to speak with him (p. 199), but in 1991
that man, Jack Dunning, told Jones and Minshall that, in their paraphrase, “his
father [the now-deceased Harold] knows nothing about such a crash, though they
are both aware of the rumors, having met [Aztec crash advocate William]
Steinman when he came to Aztec” (p. 15).

[6]See Cahn, 1952, p. 19, for the similar
drawing Newton later provided for the True writer.

Friday, October 19, 2012

As
the Roswell investigation spreads, we come upon some strange information. I was
told, not all that long ago, that the negatives of Ramey, Ramey and DuBose, and
Jesse Marcel, in the Special Collections at the University of Texas – Arlington,
had been sold. It was suggested that someone at Microsoft had bought the
negatives but to make it worse, those negatives were now gone. They had been
lost.

This
was big news because it is on one of the negatives of Ramey and DuBose that the
message clutched in Ramey’s hand could be seen and partially read. Over the
years, as technology improves, those negatives were scanned again and again,
attempting to get a better and clearer image. Who knows what the current
technology might reveal, or what new technology might find when applied? If the
negatives are gone, leaving us with only prints of the pictures, then the
original source, and therefore the best source, would be lost.

The
conspiracy implications were evident. If someone had bought the negatives and
then “lost” them, there would be no additional information found. It could be
suggested that someone, afraid of what might appear as our technology improved,
made the pictures, disappear. The government at work.

I
sent a letter to the Special Collections, giving them the various codings used
there, along with the title of the pictures, asking about them. I was sent a
quick email saying that they weren’t sure which pictures I wanted, but did send
small prints and a price list. These were the pictures in question, and I
thought I had the information.

But,
thinking about it, I realized that they could make scans from the photographs.
I do it all the time, and see little in the degradation of the original. We all
have scanners that do that sort of thing and those scanners of professional
quality certainly would be better than the one I have.

So,
I sent an email and asked specifically. Are the negatives there at the
University of Texas?

I
got a short reply.

“Yes,
we have these negatives.”

End
of story.

End
of conspiracy.

I
have no idea how this story started but it is untrue. So, if our technology
improves to a point that we can decipher the blurs on the Ramey Memo, we might
have an answer to what it says. At least the potential for universal acceptance
of what the memo says is still there. No one bought and then lost the
negatives.

It
is said that the truest test of a man’s intelligence is how much he agrees with
you, and I find that Dr. Alexander and I share a great number of opinions. I
looked first at the chapter about Philip Corso, who claimed an inside knowledge
of the Roswell UFO crash and the government plans to exploit the find by
seeding recovered material into American industry. Here Alexander writes not
only from his experience in the Pentagon and classified operations, but as a
friend of Corso. He spoke with him in the weeks prior to Corso’s death. But
Alexander found many holes in the stories spun by Corso and in the end, while
acknowledging Corso’s long military career, did not truly believe him. Here
Alexander and I agree.

John Alexander

What
was more fascinating was Alexander’s discussion of Congressional hearings about
UFOs, and what disclosure would accomplish. Writing as an insider who has
experience in this arena, Alexander suggested that neither hearings nor
disclosure were going to happen for many reasons he carefully laid out.

One
of those reasons was what almost any of us have observed ourselves. UFOs are a
third rail in politics (though Alexander suggests they are tarlike), meaning
that almost any expression of belief is the same as admitting to a belief in
Easter Bunny. He provided examples of what happened after UFOs were mentioned
in a debate with former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. From that point
on, while commenting on Kucinich’s political ideas and theories, pundits found
they had to remark about UFOs, always in a derogatory way. The UFO connection
might have nothing to do with Kucinich’s political statements, but they were
brought in anyway, as a means to discredit him.

Of
Disclosure, the idea that the US government has many classified UFO documents
to release, Alexander noted that there was nothing to actually disclose (an
idea reinforced by a recent White House announcement that the government held
no classified UFO files). The official investigation of UFOs by the Air Force
had been released decades ago and a great number of the files and records from
the now closed Project Blue Book are online, available to everyone.

Alexander
scoffs at the idea of MJ-12, that is, the super-secret committee supposedly
created by President Truman after the Roswell UFO crash. Unlike so many others
who suggest the documents are faked based on analysis of the documents
themselves, Alexander attacks from the way they entered into the public
consciousness. Using Watergate as an example, he notes that the Watergate
investigation was built on solid evidence from sources known to the reporters
while MJ-12 is built on anonymous documents sent to an obscure movie producer.
In leaks of real documents, those documents can be examined, the sources
verified, and the information corroborated. With MJ-12, there are no original documents,
there are no sources, and the information seems to be a hodge-podge of real
data taken from historical sources rewritten to include references to MJ-12.
Here again, Alexander and I agree.

And
we certainly agree with his analysis of the Air Force sponsored University of
Colorado study of UFOs known to many as the Condon Committee. He chides science
for its refusal to look critically at the results of the study, which he
describes as badly flawed. He notes scientists continue to use of the study to prove
that nothing of scientific interest could be learned from a true examination of
UFOs, when the contrary is true.He
suggests that many of the case studies cited by the Condon Committee were
cursory at best and certainly inadequate for a true scientific analysis.
Although he doesn’t mention it, one of the cases in Condon Committee report was
concluded suggesting that it was caused by a phenomenon so rare that it had
never been seen before or since. They don’t bother to identify that phenomenon.
Alexander suggests that scientists actually read the report before relying on
it to prove there is nothing of value in UFO research.

Where
we part company is his analysis on the Roswell UFO crash case. He writes that
he now subscribes to the Project Mogul answer. According to him, “While the Air
Force report, Case Closed, provides conflicting information regarding
classification, most of those involved agree it [Project Mogul] was both Top
Secret and strictly compartmented.”

But
this is simply untrue. While the ultimate purpose, to spy on the Soviet Union,
was classified, the project itself and the equipment used by it were not. For
the launches in June, 1947, the balloons were standard neoprene weather
balloons and the radar targets were foil-covered devices known as rawins. The
name of the project, contrary to what has been said many times by many other
sources, was not classified and appeared in Dr. Albert Crary’s unclassified
diary published in the Air Force study. Announcements of the launches were
required by the CAA (forerunner to the FAA) because the balloon arrays could be
a hazard to aerial navigation. Pictures of the balloon arrays were published in
newspapers around the country on July 10, 1947. So much for a highly classified
project.

What
struck me most about this short segment of the book was how he let the sources
get away from him. In other places, he carefully named those sources and their
credentials. As an example, when writing about an intercept of a UFO by an
American pilot stationed in England, he told us it was Lieutenant Milton
Torres, who eventually earned a doctorate in mechanical engineering, that
Torres taught at the university level, and he was a very credible source who
had been sworn to secrecy about his UFO encounter. We learn all that we need so
that we might verify what Alexander has written if we feel the need to do so.

With
Project Mogul, we are not so blessed. In writing about the strange symbols
reported by Jesse Marcel, Jr. (whose credentials are also carefully laid out
for us by Alexander) Alexander said, “What was learned was that on the
reflecting panels had been placed a specially designed code that could only be
read by the people with access to the key. More important, it was stated that
this code was not alphanumeric as are most that are frequently employed, but
entailed the use of glyphs.”

In
all my discussions with project engineers and others associated with Mogul,
including Charles Moore who claimed he had “launched the Roswell UFO,” this was
never mentioned. The best the Air Force could do was suggest that a flowered
tape from a novelty company had been used to reinforce part of the rawin
targets, but they produced nothing to prove it. If I wanted to verify Alexander’s
new claim, I could not. Alexander did not provide the source for this unique
bit of information.

For
me, this discussion of Roswell was the big disappointment here. While Alexander
chastised others for accepting much of the nonsense published in the UFO field
including those scientists who make statements without bothering to learn the
facts, this seems to be what Alexander has done in the Roswell case. He
accepted the story of glyphs without proper analysis.

That
said, this is a book that needs to be read and understood by all those inside
the UFO community and by everyone who has an interest in these topics. Yes, he
is going to annoy everyone regardless of personal beliefs with his opinions
about UFOs. His insider status, his knowledge of how things work in both the
world of congressional hearings and in the world of the military classification
provides an interesting insight that those pushing for congressional hearings
and full disclosure should read.

For
the most part his use of names, dates, sources and personal experiences lend an
even stronger note of credibility to his work. While he doesn’t use footnotes,
he provides the source material in the text. It is clear that he knows what he
is talking about and that he had, for the most part, the sources and data to
back it up.

Here
is a book about UFOs that is a must read for everyone. And if we disagree about
the Roswell case, well then, we disagree about Roswell.

UFO
books run the gambit from slapped together pulp jobs with little thought to
accuracy to Ph. D dissertations that rely on scholarship without a thought to
style. Thomas (Eddie) Bullard’s book, The Myth and Mysteries of UFOs, is
one that walks the fine line between over the top scholarship and the bottom of
the barrel trash. His is a book that belongs on everyone’s shelf because of the
scholarship and the readability.

It
was, for me, confusing at first. I wasn’t sure where he was going with his
scholarship. He wrote about sightings that most of us inside the UFO community
knew about, but he often answered the questions about their reality. Or maybe I
should say about their extraterrestrial nature. Clearly something had happened,
but Bullard seemed to provide us with answers for those strange cases.

The
massive sightings of March 3, 1968, in which a number of witnesses described a
cigar-shaped UFO with windows on the side, for example, was explained as the
re-entry and break-up of the Zond IV spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union.
This has become an accepted explanation throughout the UFO community and one
not without merit.

The
case is interesting because, as Bullard notes, while some thought of alien
craft, there were those who recognized the sighting for what it actually was.
Bullard suggests that the reason there weren’t more reports of this with the
proper answer is because those who properly identified it felt no compulsion to
report it. Those who thought of it in terms of an alien craft did.

But
the real importance of the sighting was how it applied to other, similar reports.
In 1948 two airline pilots saw something that they described as cigar-shaped
with square windows. This was, of course, the same thing said about the Zond IV
reentry. A cigar-shaped craft with square windows. Of course there was no
returning space debris in 1948, but there were bolides, very bright meteors,
that could give the same impression and often do.

Bullard
looks at the UFO phenomenon through the eyes of a folklorist who is studying
the legends and myths of the human race. He notes that humans, from the very
first, were reporting the strange apparitions in the sky that we now call UFOs
or flying saucers. He looks at the history of those myths.

But
he is not telling us that all UFO sightings can be explained with such a study,
only that science might learn something about human nature, about how we view
the world as opposed to how our ancestors viewed the world, and that there is
something real happening. Some of the sightings aren’t based only on our
perceptions, but on something concrete and tangible flying, or floating,
through the sky.

He
acknowledges many of the answers for what people have seen, but also makes it
clear that these answers do not cover everything that is seen. It is impossible
to write off a UFO sighting that was witnessed by dozens, especially when the
object, or objects, are detected by radar or have been photographed or leave
traces on the ground.

In
other words, Bullard sees something of value in the study of UFOs. There is
science that can be applied, and science has been negligent in what they have
done with UFO reports. Rather than be intrigued by them, science simply ignored
them.

This
is a book that has been needed since 1969 when the Air Force sponsored study at
the University of Colorado, popularly known as the Condon Committee, rejected
the idea of UFOs. They found that not only did UFOs not pose a threat to
national security, one of the Air Force’s requirements, but more outrageously,
nothing of scientific importance could be learned by studying them. Skeptics have
cited this investigation as if it is the final word on UFOs since it was
released.

Bullard’s
book, however, is the important and long needed counterpoint. He’s not arguing
that UFOs are extraterrestrial, though it appears in some places he has reached
this conclusion. No, he’s arguing that some UFOs demand scientific study. They
might not led to alien spacecraft but they will certainly add to our knowledge
of the world around us. While national security might not be an issue,
scientific understanding of our world is.

While
alien abduction might not be extraterrestrial creatures taking humans into
their craft for examination, neither is it explained by sleep paralysis. While
sleep paralysis may, in fact, explain some abduction tales, it does not explain
them all.

Bullard’s
argument here, then, is that UFOs deserve academic study. Hufford’s study of
the Old Hag, as outlined in The Terror that Comes in the Night, which is
about bedroom visitation, led us to a more complete understanding of the
phenomenon related to sleep paralysis. The study of the UFOs might lead us to
an better understanding of our psychological make up.

With
that said, Bullard is also suggesting that there are UFO sightings that are
sufficiently strange, sufficiently documented, with sufficient eyewitness
testimony, that demand study. This might lead us right into the
extraterrestrial.

Bullard
is suggesting that we stop dismissing UFOs by saying the witnesses were drunk,
uneducated, unsophisticated, or simply of below average intelligence, and apply
our science to them. He looked at the UFO phenomenon with the eyes of a trained
folklorist and found much that required study. He is saying that other
sciences, both physical and social, might benefit from a similar academic analysis.

Ridicule
is not a way to learn something new. Ridicule is a way to dismiss something
without having to know anything about it. Bullard tells us that now is the time
to stop ignoring UFOs and actually try studying with the same sort of academic
precision that is devoted to other types of anomalies. Now is the time to begin
the real science and not the pseudo-science that has gone before.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

It
has been suggested that a find of a weather balloon sometime prior to July 5,
1947, is similar to that made in Roswell a few days later. A story, headlined,
“Flying Disc Believed Found on Pickaway [Ohio] Farm,” published on July 5,
1947, in the Circleville Herald, is similar
to that published on July 8 by many newspapers around the county including the Roswell Daily Record. It is believed
that this is, in a similar sense, the Roswell story and how the same
explanation can be applied in Roswell that was applied in Ohio.

That
short article in the Ohio newspaper and later picked up by other media said:

One
of the flying discs puzzling aviators all over the United States was believed
Saturday to have been found on a Pickaway County farm.

Sherman
Campbell who lives on Westfall Road in Wayne Township, near the Pickaway-Rose
county line reported the finding of a star-shaped silver foil covered object
which he believed is one of the mystery “flying saucers.” While working in the
field he spotted a strange object. He described his find as 50 inches high, 48
inches wide and weighing about 2 lbs. He said the silver foil was stretched
over a wooded frame. The star-shaped object had 6 points.

He
said there was a balloon attached which had deflated and there was no way of
knowing how big it was. Discovery of the object was the first reported in the
country. A Coast Guardsman on the West Coast reported photographing one from a
distance, but no one has seen a flying disc close.

It
is quite clear from the article that Campbell recognized it for what it was
when he found it, meaning that he knew that it was a balloon-borne device, and
he had the balloon. He was not talking about anything else and the original
description, meaning the first reporting of it, is quite clear. He thought that
when airborne, the six-pointed star, if spinning, could give the impression of
a disc shape in bright sunlight.

Contrast
this to the press release that was put out by Walter Haut, on orders from
Colonel Blanchard. Here too, it is claimed that they had recovered a flying
disc, but they believed, it seems, that a balloon and radar target did not
explain it.

The
Associated Press version, as it appeared in a number of west coast newspapers
said:

The
many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the
intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force,
Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc
through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office
of Chavez County.

The
flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having
phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to
contact the sheriff’s office, who in turn notified Major Jesse A. Marcel of the
509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office.

Action
was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home. It was
inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel
to higher headquarters.

There
is no clue here that any of those involved, the rancher, Brazel; the sheriff,
Wilcox; the intelligence officer, Marcel; or the base commander, Blanchard,
knew it was a balloon or balloon-borne device. By the time we get to Ramey’s
office, and we have photographs of the alleged debris, it is quite clear that
it is a balloon and radar target. The blackened balloon can be seen in the
picture as well.

Campbell
knew what it was when he found it, and according to later articles, the sheriff
knew what it was when he saw it, and later the object found in Ohio was
displayed in the newspaper office. They didn’t notify the military, and
although the story was widely reported in Ohio, no military officers, no FBI
agents, and no local authorities arrived to take charge of the debris. It was
eventually returned to Campbell, at least according to what his daughter told
me twenty some years ago.

The
other report from Roswell, that is the original United Press bulletin, said:

Roswell,
N.M. – The army air forces here today announced a flying disc had been found on
a ranch near Roswell and is in army possession.

The
Intelligence office reports that it gained possession of the ‘Dis:’ [sic]
through the cooperation of a Roswell rancher and Sheriff George Wilson [sic] of
Roswell.

The
disc landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone
facilities, the rancher, whose name has not yet been obtained, stored the disc
until such time as he was able to contact the Roswell sheriff’s office.

The
sheriff’s office notified a major of the 509th Intelligence Office.

Action
was taken immediately and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home and
taken to the Roswell Air Base. Following examination, the disc was flown by
intelligence officers in a superfortress (B-29) to an undisclosed “Higher
Headquarters.”

The
air base has refused to give details of construction of the disc or its
appearance.

Residents
near the ranch on which the disc was found reported seeing a strange blue light
several days ago about three o’clock in the morning.

Again,
the contrast is startling. In Ohio, there was a description of the object
found, and there is no one confusing it for something more than it is, or was.
In Roswell, though many had examined the debris, there is no clue that this
might be a balloon and radar target. Just several people, including many who
should have known better, unable to identify what turned out to be, if we
accept the cover story, a weather balloon.

Photo of balloon and rawin from
the Circleville newspaper.

You
have to ask yourself, how is it that those in Ohio knew that it was a balloon
and those in New Mexico did not? Isn’t it interesting that both stories talk of
the balloon debris being found “last week,” though in Roswell that was
eventually changed to “three weeks ago”? Isn’t it interesting that eventually,
the balloon and radar reflector are displayed in Fort Worth, but not in
Roswell? And if our old friend Sheridan Cavitt is to be believed, he knew the
instant he saw it what it was, but made no attempt to inform either Marcel or
Blanchard. Why did he remain mum, when he was with Marcel out in the field, or
when he, with Marcel and some of the wreckage were examined by Blanchard in his
office on the morning of July 8?

You
might ask yourself (and I do, risking the wrath of the skeptics), did those in
Roswell, who might well have known about the Circleville case, take a cue from
there, changing the storyline so that it mimicked that in Ohio to hide the
facts in New Mexico? Did they change the narrative so that reporters, and
civilians, would not be inclined to ask the difficult questions that were then never
asked?

The
two storylines are interesting, to say the least. Of course the spin put on
them takes you in a direction that you might wish to take… that is, they are so
similar that Roswell is clearly a balloon… or they are similar to a point, but
there is no mention of the balloon debris in the first of the Roswell stories.
You might say that the Ohio report seems to underscore the mundane nature of
the debris found in Roswell. The two stories are the same… and yet, they are
not.

But
the real question… the real difference… is the reaction of the military to these two
events. At Circleville they ignored it. Clearly it is a balloon and posed no
threat. The day after the press release in Roswell, both the Army and the Navy
begin to suppress stories of the flying saucers. Why would they do that? What
is the difference here? Why, suddenly, on July 9 do they care that people are
seeing flying saucers but they had not cared prior to that?